A Labyrinth of Lifetimes

By Kathy Bornino

Recovering past life experiences is analogous to walking a labyrinth. You begin at an entry point, you walk in a weave back and forth until you arrive near the center, then back and forth outward again, then return in weaving toward the center again and back outwards again, until you finally arrive at the center. This center can represent the Self at the center of our being. We rest here, then set forth again, weaving our way outward until we arrive again at the entry point. We have a new experience each time we walk the labyrinth, but always we return to the center. This is like the experience of taking on new lifetimes; between lives we rest in the Spirit, Source or Great Self, the Center of our Being – choose your term. This is the ultimate adventure – definitely worthwhile exploring.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBooks2go
• Release date: Aug 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781545752784

Book preview

Epilogue

PRELUDE

Bellagio, Italy

In my early past life work in Carmel, California, with a therapist trained by Chris Griscolm of the Light Institute in Galileo, New Mexico (featured in Shirley MacLaine’s Out on a Limb) I had received advice from a guide that I should look at pictures and learn to separate out the energy from the form and color, to help me learn to process past life images. So I began the enjoyable pastime of visiting art galleries, which abound in Carmel. I was visiting my favorite gallery with my daughter and was struck by a painting of a village of tall buildings that came down to the water’s edge of what I saw as an Alpine village, with a chapel in the distance and high mountains in the background. We went on to view other paintings but over the following months my mind went back repeatedly to that painting and I decided I really wanted it. I contacted the gallery and they suggested I find it in their online catalogue of all past and current paintings. I searched but the painting was not there. The gallery suggested I come up in August when the artist would be doing open house painting and talk with her. I did so. Both artist and gallery suggested a painting that looked somewhat similar, but had modern yachts and low hills. It just wasn’t the same. We finally settled on commissioning the artist to paint a version of the painting to be more like I remembered it: no boats, and high mountains. I had quite a bit of dialogue with the artist, Barbara Felisky, who described her great pleasure in going each year to paint in Bellagio, a town on Lake Como. It sounded beautiful and I made a mental note to travel there some day. I received the painting and hung it over my piano to enjoy.

Some years later I was cleaning out old stacks of travel magazines and on the cover of one was Portofino. I saw instantly that was the painting by Felisky that the gallery did have. I figured my mind had distorted the painting. I chuckled at its trick. I still wanted to see Bellagio and a few years later the opportunity arose. I was on my own at the end of a cruise and I took a series of trains up to Lake Como. I had booked a reasonably priced hotel room away from the water’s edge in Bellagio and took the late afternoon ferry from Como to Bellagio. It was raining as the boat arrived so I hastened to make my way up the hill to Albergo Europa. There was a little field and garden shed near the very plain entrance – oh well, informal, I thought. A lady appeared with my key and told me my room was on the third floor, so I duly trekked up the stairs. The room was plain with high ceilings and French doors which opened onto a courtyard that backed up to a tall building with no rear windows. As I stepped out onto the tiny balcony I could hear chanting – a sweet sound of monks chanting, but I didn’t see any windows where the sound could be coming from. I suddenly realized this building complex had not always been a hotel, but must have been a monastery. There were no monks visible now but I most surely had heard them. I chalked it up to simply a vibration in the place. The next morning I explored and sure enough, the Albergo Europa was at the back of a basilica. The painting in the cupola struck me as odd – it seemed like a depiction of a fall of Jesus while carrying his cross but different. The main figure was fully robed though fallen, and a kingly figure was leaning over him with a sword while onlookers jeered. Then I realized that because this was Basilica San Giacomo (James in Italian), this was a depiction of the moment before martyrdom (beheading) of St. James, that same saint who is revered at the legendary resting place of his bones in Compostela, Spain. Sure enough, there were clam shells over some of the doors, indicating this was either a point of origin or stopping point for pilgrims along the Camino de Santiago (James in Spanish). I got chills and then that familiar by now sense of the spirit at work. I walked out into the sunshine and decided to stroll to the water’s edge. Bellagio is truly a lovely town with flower boxes in many windows. Lake Como can appear like a wide river. It forms a V and Bellagio is at the inside point of that V. I got to a vantage point and looked across the lake and was dumbstruck: at the far side of this lake that appears like a river was exactly the painting I had seen in my mind, which both artist and gallery said she had never painted: the tall narrow colored houses going down to the water’s edge, no boats, a chapel further up river and the Alps in the background. I knew then I had been here as a monk, and it had been a very sweet life....

I also knew then that a camino was calling to me....it was this journey I have made over lifetimes, that I must walk again and write to share with any others that were drawn to it, so their spirits could use any part of it in any way that might be beneficial to them. I chuckled remembering the Brazilian lady I had spoken with on the train to Como, who had worked for years in Italy and was now preparing to walk the Camino to Compostela in Spain...and the American girls and their mother I had overheard in Puy le Dome in France, preparing to walk the Camino to Compostela from the local Cathedral de Notre Dame, on through the south of France and over the Pyrenees...and the friends I knew who had walked the Camino or were planning on doing so....Okay, okay, okay, Spirit...I surrendered to the call, and this book is the result......

Labyrinth of Lives-A soul’s pilgrimage

With the popularity of the movie The Way has come a renaissance in desire to make the pilgrimage – literally the pilgrimage to Compostela in Spain, but also other treks, some literal to famous archeological places or places of special energy at reputed ley lines, some more symbolic or spiritual, like the pilgrimage into the cultural history of family ancestors.

Perhaps the ultimate pilgrimage is to the Divine center of the Self, the temple within. There are various treks reputed to lead there. Wise opinions differ as to which segments of the journey are necessary and which are detours and deviations.

As GPS technology improves dramatically and we begin to experience something close to driving on auto-pilot, we have also a good metaphor for developing communication with our subconscious. When we form a clear intention, it will help us find the route to our destination. However, like a GPS it can sometimes give us faulty information, and we can also override its directions by changing our mind as to destination and preferred route. We can even leave it sputtering in recalculating mode if we make too many sudden changes.

If we meditate regularly or do some other form of spiritual practice that helps us steady ourselves and keep clear intentions, we also develop communication with our spirit or super-consciousness. The combination of good communication with both super and subconscious can facilitate our soul’s journey, its pilgrimage to its alpha and omega, its essence and home.

Those who do not recall history are doomed to repeat it. Whether this is literally true could be debated, but we certainly have an opportunity to avoid future mistakes if we learn from past mistakes. And we know from reflecting on childhood experiences that the past does affect us. We can modify that influence – and gain more control over our response patterns and outlook, and more choice over influencing our future decisions, if we explore our past with the intention of learning from it and improving future outcomes.

This has been my goal in exploring the patterns in my unconscious and seeking to change them. Often that means uncovering and releasing knots of energy where my consciousness and perspective have gotten stuck, sometimes in very uncomfortable places. The release and freedom that result are worth the effort. For me, that has included exploring past lives, to release the complexes carried forward from them, and to gain access to the wisdom and skills locked in treasure troves in those lives.

I also specialize in this work as a therapist, and the overriding principle I have learned is to respect the wisdom of the super conscious and subconscious and learn to follow its lead rather than dictating too much to it. Of course the ego has the right and duty to make decisions – it is the choice point or Chooser. But aligning the ego with the superconscious and subconscious makes for a far smoother journey. It was also famed psychic and western explorer of past lives Edgar Cayce’s definition of meditation. My favorite definition of a therapist’s role is to follow the client one step ahead – in other words, staying closely connected with the client’s current position, yet seeing the potholes directly ahead in order to warn – but not setting the goal or determining the preferred route, although psychological map reading, along with training in tools and equipment, can certainly be offered.

Exploring past lives is not every soul’s preferred route or not their chosen route in this lifetime, but for those who may be called to explore this route in some measure, I offer this account partly as a guide for your own exploration, and also an example of the kinds of pathways this route can take, and what can be required to follow it. It has been a deeply rewarding path but not as simple or direct as many people who discover an interest in past lives would like it to be.

The exploration of past lives benefits from various kinds of preparation. A comfort level with experiencing, expressing and processing feelings is very beneficial and usually the psyche will not open the door to memories without this if you are exploring on your own. A trained guide can be a great help with this, even a psychotherapist who does not do past life regression work but regularly encourages emotional expression in therapy can help you accustom yourself to the flow of emotional energy. Body workers who are experienced in facilitating emotional release are another greater resource. Practitioners of myofascial release, bioenergetics, hakomi, Peter Levine trauma release, sensory-emotional release and similar modalities are especially adept at this. A meditation practice is definitely helpful, along with any consciousness raising programs that explore death and dying as normal processes to become more at ease with. All of these preparations send signals to the unconscious that exploring memories is both safe and desired.

What you will find in this book are accounts of a variety of different past life experiences, mostly in sequence as I encountered them in regressions, some recounted in more detail so you can get some of the flavor of actual regression therapy dialogue, as well as an exploration of various past life regression modalities, levels of practitioner training, kinds of experiences that can arise in the course of past life exploration (ex. archetypal energies, ancestor and entity intrusions) and some guidelines and resources for productive past life exploration.

Recovering past life experiences is analogous to walking a labyrinth. You begin at an entry point, you walk in a weave back and forth until you arrive near the center, then back and forth outward again, then return in weaving toward the center again and back outwards again, until you finally arrive at the center. This center can represent the Self at the center of our being. We rest here, then set forth again, weaving our way outward until we arrive again at the entry point. We have a new experience each time we walk the labyrinth, but always we return to the center. This is like the experience of taking on new lifetimes; between lives we rest in the Spirit, Source or Great Self, the Center of our Being – choose your term. This is the ultimate adventure – definitely worthwhile exploring.

I fervently hope that you will benefit yourself now and in your future – and your past! – by exploring your own soul’s journey. You will also benefit your descendants and others around you in this and future lives. When famed psychologist Carl Jung was asked if he thought mankind would survive or perish in some cycle of destruction such as world war, he replied: Mankind will survive if enough people do their inner work.

Godspeed,

Namaste!

ATLANTEAN HERBALIST GLIMPSES

As a young adult and for two decades I was